I vividly remember attending the boys S.U. camp in Meigle during the
Easter holidays in 1965, which was led by J. W. (“Boss”) Meiklejohn, who was a
stalwart of Scripture Union in Scotland. We went by bus from outside S.U.’s
Glasgow offices in St Vincent Street to ‘Belmont Camp’ where we lived not under
canvas, but in long wooden dormitory blocks each named after a local place – I
was in Eassie. Each morning, the whole camp met together, and I remember my
acute embarrassment each day when the letters from home were handed out, and my
mother (bless her!) had never failed to send me a comic, rolled up in a tube
and wrapped in brown paper, which I had to walk to the front to receive. “Boss”
organised a camp quiz, and I was on the winning team, although I rather think
we cheated. Each of us received as a prize a book inscribed by “Boss” – mine
was Some want it tough, by Leneord
Moules, a Christian who, if I remember correctly, had made it to the top of
Everest.
My other public activity at camp was reciting a camp alphabet which the
boys and leaders in my dorm had helped me compose. S.U. camps at that time were
still run on rather military grounds – the leader was known as the Commandant,
and his assistant the Adjutant – the latter would come round each morning,
assessing the tidiness of the dorms according to what we felt were excessively
pernickety standards. And so my alphabet
began
A is for Adjy, his head is so bust
That he’s always looking for
small bits of dust
and continued through the alphabet until it reached V, which was the
gloriously anarchic
V is for vomit which means the same as spew
And after you’ve heard this, is
that what you’ll do?
Thereafter, our inspiration exhausted, we concluded with a conventional
W, X, Y and Z
We’ve done enough now, we’re off
home to bed.
I remember one afternoon at camp we all climbed a nearby hill. For some
reason I impetuously rushed ahead to get to the top first rather than walking
up in the easy companionship of the others.
On the serious side, I remember learning, and being moved by the beauty
of the slow, majestic hymn Thine be the
glory to Handel’s tune Judas Maccabeas which we sang each day before “Boss’s”
talk. And I remember regarding with some awe the missionary Bill Gilvear who
was at the camp, and who we knew had just returned from Africa, where we knew he
had endured terrible hardship. There would have been challenges to respond to
Christ, in the talks, and small dorm groups, but these came standard with the
evangelical territory, and made no impression on me.
The Beatles had another hit in the charts that spring, Ticket to Ride, and rather to my
puzzlement, boys were running around the camp singing the first line at the
tops of their voices. As usual, I didn’t pick the words up properly, and so I
wondered why this particular girl so urgently wanted to travel to Brighton…….
Some of my friends from Wishaw High School accompanied me to camp, but I
have not recollection of being drawn closer to them through the shared experience.
My parents were keen that I build new friendships – there was a boy in my dorm
whose name, when I mentioned it to them on the phone, suggested that he might
be the son on a prominent dentist. ‘Speak to him!’ my parents urged. But I
remained withdrawn, seeking to cover up my sense of shyness and inadequacy with
my usual exhibitionistic bluster.
The night before we were to go home, I lay petrified on my top bunk,
afraid to go to sleep, and afraid I’d need to go to the loo before daylight
came. The dorm leaders had unwisely woven a web of terror with their stories of
ghosts which walked in Eassie dorm on the last night of camp.
The next day we returned to Glasgow in the bus. I sat beside the window,
sticky-fingeredly sucking rock while reading, and being enthralled by The small woman, Alan Burgess’s book
about Gladys Aylward’s experiences in China which I had bought on the camp
bookstall. When we got home, I took to my bed completely exhausted for several
days.
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